Feelings.
Do you have those feelings that you just want to chase and hang on to?
Then those feelings that you really want to avoid?
Have you ever felt put down, shut down, told you’re wrong and started to have one of those feelings? For most of us, what we do is either explode to get rid of it or push it down, move on and try to forget it happened.
We are ineffective at processing our feelings and communicating them… Factual feeling- feelings are facts! We need to know how to step in and say it how it is.
I have found with all the people that I work with, that we are feeling machines. Everything we do is either chase a feeling, keep a feeling, or avoid a feeling. People die trying to avoid feelings and refusing to talk about them. We need factual feeling.
In 2018 there was a paper published in the National Library of Medicine that stated 80% of us misinterpret emotional responses. Not just other people's, our own as well! Factual feeling, we need to know how to process this.
I grew up in a house where you didn't do feelings. People who did, well, they were “just trying to get attention”. So, we learned to push it down and get on with it.
I took that skill with me into my marriage. My husband bought the same skill with him. Push it down and get on with it.
Hey, we were a team.
We talked.
We talked about where we wanted to go, what we wanted to do, what we wanted to achieve, and what our kids were going to do…
...but we didn't talk about “it”.
I remember 30 years after we came together. I was in our home sitting on the stairs that lead from the lounge room to the bedrooms, and my heart cracked open because I knew my marriage was over. I grabbed a pillow, and I was trying to hide the sobs because my four adult children were in the kitchen fighting about who was going to eat the last of the ice cream they’d come over for.
“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new” -Socrates
Have you ever been in a situation where you're falling apart and the world's just going on around you?
I climbed upstairs and went to try and figure out what my next move was going to be. I prayed every night that I wouldn't wake up in the morning because I was so tired of feeling. I’d wake up and cry because I was terrified, alone and lost.
Step by step, I got help.
I learned things.
I pushed through.
It took me over 50 years...but I figured out that I could have a feeling, I could talk about it with someone…out loud…and not die.
Game Changer!
Factual feeling - it was so easy. There were no hard conversations, just three steps to effectively communicating.
“When you said …”
“I made it mean …”
“And now I feel …”
So easy.
I shared it with my kids. They're now literate around emotions, feelings and how to process them. Sometimes though, I think they just having a go…
“Mum, when you said that you wanted me to make you a cup of coffee. I made it mean I'm your slave and now I feel really hurt”
“Sweetie, make it a Long Black … please.”
But even better, these steps work with self-talk.
I am a feeling machine. No matter how much inner work I do, I’ll still feel angry, sad, confused, desperate and anxious. The work however means I realise,
“When I said/thought/did…”
“I made it mean …”
“And now I feel …”
Game changer! The feeling is real. But the “I made it mean”, that's not.
I get to change that - acknowledge what it’s about and then change the feeling.
Factual feeling frees us up to step into our power and truly be fearless.
Because it doesn't matter what the feeling is.
You just feel it.
Change the meaning.
And change the feeling.
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